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Social Media Breathes New Life Into Branded Content

This article is the second installment of a three-part series on social media strategies for business.

Branded content has been around in some form or another since Procter & GambleProcter & Gamble invented the radio soap opera to connect with its customers back in the 1930s.

The idea of entertaining, educating or even inspiring your clients into making a transaction is nothing new in the world of marketing. But more and more businesses — from Fortune 500s to tiny startups — are realizing it’s a strategy that lends itself perfectly to social media.

This was a burgeoning trend highlighted at the Forbes and Capital One “Social Media: Cracking the Code” forum in New York on September 20, an event where social media experts and small business owners shared their insights and experiences.

It’s safe to say that brand journalism, or branded content, is making a comeback in a big way, and it’s exploding on the Internet in the form of sponsored blogs, forums, digital channels and independent sites.

In early August, for example, General MillsGeneral Mills teamed up with AOLAOL to launch its new site Live Better America. Lifestyle articles from AOL’s Huffington Post and recipes from General Mills pepper the sponsored site, which aims to create conversations about healthy living. Readers engage and spread the word through social media: tweeting, pinning and discussing things they’ve seen there.

And who is most often featured somewhere in the conversation? Why, General Mills, of course. This is an example in which branded marketing has made a perfect transition into social media marketing.

Publishing startup Contently noticed this trend a while back, recently expanding its business plan to include sponsored content. (Full disclosure: Contently has a partnership with Forbes.) Contently also tracks trends in branded content through its blog The Content Strategist.

Shane Snow, Contently’s cofounder, was one of the participants in the Forbes forum, and he was pleasantly surprised by what other businesses had to say. “The panel talked about branded content in social media as a given, whereas a year ago there would have been a debate about its merits,” he says. That bodes well for the future of Contently as a model.

“I think businesses can take a lot of cues from fast-growing new media properties like The Verge, BuzzFeed, RedBull.com and Mashable,” says Snow.

Snow adds that using owned media to drive social consumers back to your own property, then building loyalty through content people actually want — as opposed to commercials that interrupt them — is going to disrupt the online marketing industry in a big way.

If you’re thinking about diving into the creative world of branded content and social media, it might be a good idea to keep these pointers in mind:

Develop a voice. You don’t mess around with your logo, so be focused in creating a pitch-perfect social media presence.

Embrace the nuances. Consumers are smart, so branded content should be subtle.

Be seen at all the right parties. Where your content is published matters. Be sure to research the sites and outlets your customers frequent and respect.

Get it out there. This is where social media is your best friend. Get a real distribution plan for your branded content and execute it well — in some cases, you may even want to consider using a content distribution platform.

Tailor content to the social media platform. For example, post photos on Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram; promote text on Facebook and news on Twitter.

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I’m absolutely loving this series of articles. I’ve been studying social media for about a year now, and I find branded content to be a vital part of marketing a business – especially a startup business.

It’s not shameless advertising. It’s all about being unique while also being helpful. Once you attract people with that kind of content, it’s okay to apply your brand. It lends to the company’s credibility.

Social media is one of the possible business strategies of a business enterprise – may it be big or small. If you would search in the internet on how social media helps business achieve their success, you will probably be surprised on how much positive effect it carries.

I doubt it if social media had not able to come up this tactics, maybe they are also experiencing lots of controversies, sales declination and more. This sounds interesting actually, because they able to capture what the world wants out from them. Indeed, social media had played the finest role in business and the way it promotes ads are exemplary. I just hope they won’t experience the so-called worst rise and fall as every year innovations of newest things and mediums are getting better and better.

Marketing a business includes creativity to persuade effectively your target market and the media had been one of the most effective tools. Technically, talking about the start-up especially marketing the kind of business you had, branded contents really work out best.

Aside from the online socialization people get from social media, they also provide advantages in the business field. Primarily as it can help big in the optimization and publicity of your business, products and services.